The Answer
by Dragon6125
Summary: In which Marco ponders why Rage(Ace) keeps dropping out of the game at random times and then finally makes the connection. Sequel to Irony in Fire, can be read separately. Part of my Virtual Reality/Modern AU. Main Fic is called Playing with Dragons. Can also be read separately.


Rage had a problem.

Now, Marco wasn't 100% sure what the problem was, exactly, or if that problem was even positive or negative in nature, but it was intriguing to say the least. It didn't matter where they were or what they were doing, there was always a chance that Rage would suddenly disconnect from the game. They could be in the middle of a party and devouring a weeks worth of supplies and his avatar would fall asleep, pixelizing into nothingness and leaving his plate behind. They could be in the middle of a battle against the marines or other pirates and he would suddenly collapse and disappear. It didn't matter the situation, if he was there one moment there was always a chance that he would be gone the next.

It was the biggest pain in the ass after Rage first joined the crew. Because of the way that the game handled logging out and logging back in, whenever Rage would blip out of the game while on land or during combat on another ship a group of people from the crew would have to stay behind with a ship to collect him when he finally reconnected or find the nearest island and hope that Rage would eventually appear on shore to be picked up. After the first few times they'd stopped leaving people behind for him and Marco himself has taken up collecting him because it was much easier to take care of with his flying capabilities. Despite all the hassle, no one on the crew was about to suggest asking him to stay behind on the ship when they left because Rage was an invaluable member of their crew both in and out of battle.

That's why they'd built Rage the Striker. Marco continued to pick up Ace every time he ended up getting left behind throughout the designing and construction of Ace's personal skiff, but as soon as it was done they made certain that Ace had it on him every time he left the ship. Sometimes he assured them that it was unnecessary that day, but the crew was always skeptical anyway, bringing the Striker along just in case.

It wasn't until later that the occurrence began to make sense to Marco. Rage had told him that he was a firefighter in the real world. Now, Marco prided himself on being an intelligent man, but it took him a week to connect the dots between this strange problem of Rage's and his occupation. It hadn't occurred to him at first because the idea seemed absurd to him, but the only explanation that Marco could come up with was that Rage played when he was at work. The crew had always just assumed that maybe Rage had a shitty Internet connection, but Rage being a firefighter definitely shed some new light on the situation. Why he would be playing One Piece while on the job, however, was beyond Marco.

So, Marco sought out Rage for answers in the mess hall, "Question."

"Shoot." Rage allowed around a mouthful of chicken. Marco couldn't remember the last time he'd heard someone say 'shoot' as a means of giving someone permission to ask a question.

"So with your job…" Marco began, wondering how best to word his question to his fellow commander sitting across from him at the table "Is you suddenly conking out unexpectedly related to it in some way, yoi?"

Rage nearly spit all over the table before he covered his mouth, shoulders shaking uncontrollably as he tried to contain his sudden fit of laughter. He finally swallowed and let out a breathy laugh as he nodded "Yeah, it is. I probably should have explained that ages ago, shouldn't I?"

Marco dropped his fist onto the table, glaring at Rage with a look he knew read 'ya think' which only caused Rage to laugh harder. Marco glared "It would have been nice to know, yoi."

"Well it's not like it's much of a problem anymore and no one asked. They just assumed I had a shitty Internet connection and I never bothered to correct them." Rage shrugged, taking another bite of his chicken, eyes raised as if to ask 'is that all you wanted to know?'

"Wait." Thatch suddenly cut in, elbow on the table as the pompadour'ed man sat and invited himself into the conversation. "So it's not your internet?" he asked. Being one of the most outspoken about himself of the crew, they'd long since stopped calling the man by the shortened form of his username, Prank (or 5k as Rage called him), and by his real name, Thatch, as he'd insisted. Unless they were conversing with other people from outside of the crew, that is. It was back to shortened usernames in that case.

"Nope." Rage confirmed "Not my internet."

"Then… what is it?" Thatch asked, his interest along with the interests of many of the crewmembers around them peaked.

Marco opened his mouth to respond but hesitated, glancing over at Rage to make sure that it was okay to reveal personal information like that to Thatch of all people on the crew. As soon as the words left his mouth, Marco knew that the whole crew would find out. Rage nodded his consent and Marco revealed, "He's a fire fighter, yoi."

"You're a fire fighter!?" Thatch exclaimed loudly "What a crazy coincidence! How many stars had to align to give _you_ the flame flame fruit of all people?" the man laughed.

"Right? I found it hilarious." Ace chucked, taking another bite "I play from work fairly often because" he swallowed "because we have a few Dragons at the station for training exercises. There's this nifty simulator game that we have now that's pretty cool, but all the Dragons have One Piece pre-installed on them so," Ace shrugged and then took another bite, leaving that thought hanging before picking up another one, "And when I'm at home, I just steal my brother's when he's at work." Rage admitted as he chewed. He swallowed down his mouthful and took another bite of the oversized chicken leg before continuing "So me dropping out of the game all the time is because we've gotten a call. When I come back quickly it's because our station wasn't on rotation for that call. If only an hour goes by it's because it wasn't serious or we got called to retrieve someone's cat or something. If I don't come back for a few hours or if a whole day or so goes by then it's because I was out actually putting out a major fire or when we got back I had work to do," he explained as he finished, licking the grease off his fingers.

"Aaand they let you?" Marco asked, still a little baffled by the idea, thinking about how disorienting it was when he came out of the dive normally, let alone being forcefully ejected. He'd never had that happen before so he couldn't even imagine what that might be like. "Don't you only have a few seconds after the alarm goes off to be headed out, yoi?"

"Depends on the situation." Rage shrugged. "It was something that I trained to get used to. It's the only reason why the chief lets me keep doing it." Rage looked thoughtful for a moment before he laughed, "Okay so there was this one time…" Rage paused to scoop some of the food from his plate into his mouth. Marco leaned towards the table, propping his head up on the back of his left hand as Ace launched himself into his explanation "I think it was, like, the second or third time that I did it and the chief was pretty annoyed but he couldn't get too mad because it wasn't like I was holding anyone back much.

"I am usually really smart with it. I don't normally play on day shifts because we're usually insanely busy all day but sometimes I can squeeze in a couple hours after lunch. Night shifts are pretty lax after dinner and I can usually squeeze in about four hours of game time in a fourteen-hour night shift and spend the rest of it working on paperwork like Pineapple here does." Rage smirked at Marco as he took another bite of food. Marco scowled, but didn't bother to interrupt, having long since given up on the nickname. "The same applies for the twenty-four hour shifts, just combined and with sleep on the schedule. We're a lot busier than people think we are because we have to shoulder more and more work but people still seem to think that all we do is sit around playing cards all day but" Rage shrugged. "Anyway. We're allowed to take naps on the job, especially when it's, like, one of our twenty-four hour workdays. But what we generally do to save some time is that we get mostly into uniform and take naps in the engine. We have beds in the station we use at night, but a little precaution if your planning on taking more than a twenty-minute nap is necessary sometimes.

"So back to my story," Ace said, cleaning up his plate, "The third time after the chief got annoyed at me, I got one of the really long extension cords and pulled it all the way out into the garage and hooked the Dragon up to it. I brought my uniform out with me and then connected to the game out there. The guys all got a kick out of how ridiculous I looked slumped in the passenger seat of the engine and there's a picture of me from that day hanging up on the wall in the commons." Rage continued, stretching noisily before settling back down with a sigh

"But yeah." Rage said, moving on, "You know how that disorienting feeling that you get when you come out of the dive mostly goes away after you've done it enough times? Yeah, I figured that maybe the jelly-limbed, nauseated, dazed feeling that you get when you're forcibly ejected from the game might go away, too, if I did it enough times. The chief seemed to agree and we actually worked it into our training regime because we use those headsets for training exercises and we'd just been lucky so far that we hadn't gotten a call during one of them yet. We did it for weeks. At least three times a day and pretty soon everyone in the station could be ejected from the dive, on their feet, in uniform, and in the truck in the same amount of time it took us to do it regularly. Good thing, too, because the paper mill caught fire a week later and we were called out during a training exercise. We got there in time to put it out before it spread to storage and every truck in the county would have had to be called in to fight it. So yeah, no one cares too much when I play while on duty unless there's more important things that I could be doing with that time." Rage concluded, looking pretty smug.

"Wow, who would have thought that our resident pyromaniac put out fires for a living?" MonteVista25 mused, drawing Marco's gaze upwards to the man as he pulled at his mustache. He was standing there along with a large part of the currently online crew that was onboard the Moby Dick.

Rage grinned, "When you've been a fire fighter for several years you pick up a few things about fire."


End file.
